Sam Harris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxhcWUSoE4Y

Evidence indicates that Jesus learned his teachings from the age of 14-29 by Buddhist teachers in India…

It's a shame the majority of his followers didn't heed the essence of the message…

Evidence indicates that Jesus didn’t exist..

Regardless of whether Jesus existed or not, there is evidence that Buddhism had it’s influence on proto-Christianity as it developed.  There are some similarities between the alleged life of Jesus and the alleged life of Buddha.

It is probably more like John the Baptizer was influenced by Buddha.

There seems to be more evidence for the existance of John and his cult.

Everyone focuses on Jesus, but the Backstory of John is in fact much more interesting.

John the Baptist is definitely a historical figure, with ample evidence in contemporary Jewish sources, for example (in contrast to J.C.)

Yes, and his movement is what spawned the Jesus movement.

Many forget Jesus took off where John stopped.  It was probably not just Jesus either, John seemed to have a LARGE following.

My own personal opinion is that the story of Jesus is an amalgam of the stories of several prophets in the John tradition, with mythology added to keep it alive.

John wandered around in the wilderness, wearing as little as possible, and surviving off the land, and he preached a rebirth through water baptism (analogous to the birth water?)

While I am not sure about the historical existance of Jesus, the combination of the way John acted and some of the ideas expressed through the gospels and credited to Jesus makes me think if anyone had contact with Buddahistic philosophies it was probably John.

Maybe someone with more historical knowledge of John and his cult could expand on this idea.

if jesus learned from buddha then he obiously didn’t listen very well otherwise christianity wouldn’t have forums like this dedicated to its demise